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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 8 Nov 1983

Vol. 345 No. 8

Meeting with British Prime Minister: Statement by Taoiseach.

I propose, a Cheann Comhairle, to make a statement on the meeting with the British Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, in Chequers on 7 November, attended on the Irish side by the Tánaiste, Deputy Dick Spring, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Peter Barry. The Prime Minister was accompanied by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, Q.C., M.P., and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mr. James Prior, M.P.

I have arranged to have laid before the House a copy of the communique issued after the meeting which includes, by way of annex, a Joint Report of the Steering Committee of the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council and a review of activity in relation to the Anglo-Irish Joint Studies since November 1981.

The meeting took place in three parts. There was, first of all, a tete-a-tete between the Prime Minister and myself, which lasted for almost two hours. Simultaneously the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs met with the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Following these separate meetings the entire group met in plenary session. The discussions continued over a working lunch.

The Tánaiste, Minister and I also had meetings with Mr. Kinnock, Leader of the Labour Party, Dr. Owen, Leader of the Social Democratic Party and Mr. Steel, Leader of the Liberal Party. At these meetings we discussed matters of common concern, particularly the situation in Northern Ireland and recent and pending developments in the European Communities.

In brief, our discussions with the Prime Minister related to Northern Ireland and other bilateral issues, the European Community and international affairs. The principal purpose of the meeting was to improve and deepen the relationship which I had originally developed some years ago. There have already been 13 meetings at ministerial level of the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council since last February. There have also been three meetings each of the official Steering and Co-ordinating Committees. The documents which I have laid before the House will illustrate the range of subjects which have been dealt with through this process in the time scale I have mentioned. They are a record of considerable achievement.

The discussion on Northern Ireland and bilateral issues ranged widely. I took the opportunity, as leader of my party, to brief the Prime Minister on the work of the Forum, as it has developed in public sessions and in the published documents, particularly the recent document on The Cost of Violence Arising from the Northern Ireland Situation Since 1969. I have been most careful not to pre-empt in any way the conclusions of the Forum, to whose freedom of deliberation and action I attach very considerable importance.

During our discussions I stressed to the Prime Minister the very real dangers arising from the sense of alienation from the institutions of Government on the part of a large minority of the population in Northern Ireland. I urged the necessity for deep and urgent reflection on how this might be tackled.

We both recognised that the challenge to our Governments is very simply to ask ourselves together — in the interests of peace and stability in this island and of relations between this country and Britain — not what we want, but what workable arrangements can we devise together which will give to the people of Northern Ireland what they want and what they need. Their fundamental requirement is for stability and order. The test of any solution must be that it be realistic and answer the basic need for identification by the people with the institutions of Government which is the very basis of society.

We discussed the problems facing the European Community, both at the tete-a-tete and at the plenary sessions. The forthcoming European Council in Athens will be of crucial importance to the Community, which, as Deputies know, is approaching the limit of the “Own Resources” system of financing, and therefore finds itself inhibited not only in developing new policies but even in administering the policies which form its very foundation. We discussed the growth in total spending of the Community and the various proposals for dealing with future financing problems.

I stressed to the Prime Minister the vital importance of increasing the Community's resources and the unsatisfactory nature of current proposals from the Commission which would limit the increase in these resources to a figure likely to be exhausted in a short period of years. The whole problem would then, of course, again have to come before the entire community in the type of confrontational way which has been visibly so damaging. I am not suggesting that the British Government have the same perspective on this aspect of the problem but they do, at least, now know our view on it.

In relation to the Common Agricultural Policy I explained very clearly the nature of the burdens which the proposed super-levy would impose on the Irish economy and the fundamental damage it would do if implemented. This would do, proportionately, to our country many times the damage that would have been done to other countries by measures which have in recent years occupied a great deal of the Community's time, and which the Community has found it essential to ameliorate. The Community cannot function if it seeks to impose on its members solutions which those members find unacceptable.

In passing, I should perhaps comment that the proposal of the Greek Presidency with respect to the super-levy, while it recognises the existence of a special Irish problem, will not in its present form be acceptable to the Irish Government. We shall be seeking a derogation from the proposed super-levy.

The progress with the negotiations for enlargement of the Community to include Spain and Portugal and the financial and political consequences were also discussed in some detail. Finally, I took the opportunity of raising with the Prime Minister briefly the operation of the European Monetary System.

The Tánaiste, at the meeting with the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, expressed Irish concern in relation to discharges from the nuclear reprocessing plant at Windscale. This matter is shortly to be the subject of a special inquiry by the British Government and they have noted our concern.

In relation to international affairs, we had a substantial discussion on the situation in the Lebanon and also discussed the problems throughout the Caribbean and Central America.

I went to London with the objective that we should lay the foundation for dialogue on ways and means to achieve peace and stability in Northern Ireland in the interests of this island and of a constructive and friendly relationship between the peoples of our two countries, I believe that this objective was achieved.

I find it very difficult to comment on what was essentially an non-event. There seems to have been no substance at all to the meeting between the British Prime Minister and the Taoiseach and we are clearly no closer to a solution of the Northern Ireland problem. In fact, I read with some dismay a leader in The Daily Telegraph— I am not too sure how accurate it is — but it says, in so many words, that none of this amounts, of course, to an answer to the Northern Irish question which does not appear to have been discussed in any detail at yesterday's meeting. I trust the Taoiseach will discount that particular report, if it can be discounted.

Last week I openly questioned the point of this meeting yesterday because it seemed to be a question of having a meeting for a meeting's sake. The private meeting seems largely to have consisted of a monologue from the Taoiseach and I quote what the Taoiseach said in The Times of London:

It was an exposition by me rather than an active discussion between us.

There is no indication that he made the slightest impression on the British Prime Minister or that there has been the slightest change in her position. Indeed, when the Taoiseach was questioned on that very point at the press conference yesterday he had, unfortunately — and, I thought, somewhat embarrassingly — to evade the question entirely.

The Taoiseach is quoted as speaking about a return to the warmth and positiveness of two years ago. The only thing I can say about that is: Taoiseach, come off it. I do not know about the warmth, because I was not there, but I certainly do know that any single member of the Irish public looking at the television press conference last night could not have identified one single positive in anything the Taoiseach said. Indeed, watching that press conference on television, one had to be conscious of a total lack of substance and an entire preponderance of vague generalities and nothing else.

I accept that the Taoiseach's objectives going to the meeting were relatively modest but, even allowing for that, it is seriously disappointing that the communiqué contains no acknowledgement by the British Government of the importance or potential value of the Forum, still less any endorsement of it. Here let me say that I acknowledge that the Taoiseach was scrupulously careful in talking about the Forum and describing it as having been established by the four parties concerned. I appreciate his doing that on that public occasion. However, in that communiqué there was no joint commitment to finding a political solution even over a period of years. All the communiqué states is that "They expressed their deep concern about continuing violence and their joint determination to take all possible means to end it". The Irish Press pointed out this morning that, as far as the British Government are concerned, this means a joint commitment to a security solution. I would have thought that everybody by now accepts that to search for a security solution in isolation and without any political progress is entirely futile.

Hear, hear.

That is what the communiqué amounts to. On the Taoiseach's own account there was no reference in the discussion to an Anglo-Irish parliamentary institution, for instance, or to any suggestion that any new institutions might be proposed by the Forum. The only subject that appears to have been discussed in any depth was the alienation of a section of the Nationalist community in Northern Ireland. I think it would have been the Taoiseach's duty to press home to the British Prime Minister just how much violence has cost this country, as illustrated graphically by the Forum report on that subject last week. That report showed that we are paying four times as much per head on security as Britain is, about £134 million alone this year. That report also showed that the direct cost of violence and the economic cost to us came to over £2 billion since 1969, while some £9.5 billion was the cost to the British Exchequer. It is, of course, a matter for the British public to say whether they chose to go on pouring out these vast sums of money to support the status quo in Northern Ireland. However, everybody knows that in our present economic situation it will be increasingly difficult to carry these costs and to justify them to the Irish taxpayer if there is no clear indication that the British Government share our anxiety and determination to secure a political solution.

The chief claim made for the meeting has been that it has re-established normal Anglo-Irish relations. I do not believe that Anglo-Irish relations are any more normal than they were the day before yesterday. There was a noticeable lack of conviction in the Taoiseach's statement when he was talking about that aspect. The evidence produced that there has been a series of inter-governmental meetings since November 1981 is a bit thin. I note that no fewer than three of those 20 meetings listed took place in May 1982 when Anglo-Irish relations were supposed to be at the lowest ebb ever.

However, underlying all those generalities about restoring good relations and putting them back on course is this subservient innuendo that we were wrong to assert our own independent policies at the time of the Falklands war. I want to reject that snide suggestion. We have every right — indeed, it is our duty — to take our own independent view of that conflict and to assert that view and to act in accordance with the principles in international affairs to which we have always adhered. In my view Anglo-Irish relations can never be normal as long as Britain maintains a presence in Ireland against the opposition of four-fifths of the Irish people.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

The only way to establish real normality is for both Governments to come together and adopt a joint approach leading towards a resolution of the problem. No sign of a joint approach emerged from yesterday's meeting and I think the Taoiseach must acknowledge that. The Taoiseach appears to have radically modified and watered down the approach adopted by him during the last general election. He said on 18 November 1982:

Complete and radical rethinking of British policy is now needed and needed quickly if the situation is to be retrieved from a drift towards chaos. It must be the purpose of the Government elected to office on 14 December next to secure from the British Government a recognition of the need for such a radical revision of its policies while there is yet time to save the situation.

It is quite clear from the communique and the Taoiseach's press conference that there was no sense of urgency yesterday. The Taoiseach actually spoke of a relaxed atmosphere. Did the Taoiseach impress on the British Prime Minister the need to revise radically British policy on Northern Ireland as he promised the electorate he would in November 1982? The Taoiseach and the Government in their dealings with the British Government must avoid anything that smacks of the junior partner attitude. We need not make too much of the point, but yesterday's meeting, for instance, should have been held in Dublin; and to me and to many of my colleagues the Government seem to be adopting an approach on a number of issues determined more by British policy needs than by the merits of the issues themselves. Is there any reciprocation of this attitude, such as an all-eventful meeting at Chequers? I see a danger in all this that this Government will sacrifice our position and interests in some areas without any return whatsoever. I note, and I cannot help mentioning with some interest and cynical amusement, that the Taoiseach's new bible on Northern Ireland has become the speech of the Minister for Justice to the British-Irish Association. This presumably superseded the speech of the Minister for Foreign Affairs on 9 March in Limerick.

On the economic side, of course I welcome the conclusion of the major initiative launched by Fianna Fáil in 1980 and brought to a provisional conclusion in 1982, and I refer to the supply of Kinsale gas to the North, which is an excellent development which should in the course of time be appreciated and should contribute greatly to better relations between the two parts of the island. I am very glad also that the Taoiseach made reference to the problem of the pollution of the Irish Sea from Windscale. That is increasingly engaging the minds of our people and very real, not fanciful, worries are entertained about it. The situation there needs to be investigated fully.

The super-levy and other EEC matters seem to have been discussed at some length. It was not clear, however, that the Taoiseach had won any understanding in practical terms for our position. Indeed, the results from Ireland's diplomatic initiatives on the super-levy seem to have been very slight so far. I note that in the European publications concerning Community discussions and the lead-up to the Athens Summit Irish problems are rarely referred to, and when they are referred to no indication of the Government's outright opposition comes through. The Government's negotiating tactics — yesterday's meeting fits into that pattern — have not been singularly successful to date. First of all, there was the Taoiseach's over-optimism that the threat had been defeated at the Stuttgart Summit, when in fact the onslaught was just about to commence. The result of his meeting with Mr. Papandreou seems to have been minimal, with the proposal yesterday to impose a 1983 limit on Irish dairy production instead of an 1981 limit. I quote from the Taoiseach's own communique, page 5, where he said:

In passing I should perhaps comment on the proposal of the Greek President with respect to the super-levy which, while it recognised the existence of a special Irish problem, will not in its present form be acceptable to the present Irish Government.

So much for the journey to Athens. I could be cynical and ask the Taoiseach "Was your journey really necessary?".

There must also be, I am afraid, some suspicions in our minds, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs has not taken any action so far to disabuse our minds of those suspicions, as to why exactly the meeting with Chancellor Kohl was called off. Potentially that was an important visit.

Nothing in the nature of our national interest is set out in this. It is a strange situation when one reflects on it to find that our nearest neighbour is prepared to take no account whatsoever of our national interest in these matters. It should not be forgotten that there is an imbalance in our trade. Last year it was an imbalance of £1 billion. In other words, their exports exceeded our imports by roughly that amount. In the first eight months of this year the figure was £630 million. The Taoiseach could surely have persuaded the British Prime Minister to pay some regard to our economic life remembering that anything that we might win in Brussels on the agricultural front would benefit Northern Ireland farmers just as much as it would benefit our farmers.

Again I go back to The Daily Telegraph and to the sentiments expressed there. I am not too sure how much The Daily Telegraph represents official British Government thinking but what I want to draw attention to is something the Minister for Foreign Affairs may also regard as of some significance:

Why, then, is a roughly amicable relationship between Britain and the Republic to be so strongly desired? Essentially because such a relationship helps to isolate and discourage the IRA and also because it powerfully assists Britain in presenting the case for her Ulster policy to the outside world and particularly the United States.

I do not want to make too much of that but it is something that should be kept in mind in deciding, and this is something I have been arguing for some time, whether or not Summit meetings of yesterday's kind should be held at all. All in all, I believe very little was achieved yesterday and I doubt very much if that very little will lead anywhere. Meetings like that held yesterday produce nothing and lead nowhere and because of that the course of events here will be dictated by others outside the political and constitutional arena in which event the position in Northern Ireland will probably be exacerbated rather than ameliorated.

The Taoiseach's statement has not given the House much more than what was in the communiqué. The only expression of concern was that voiced by the Tánaiste and Minister for the Environment. He expressed concern in relation to the threat of nuclear war. It is significant that Mrs. Thatcher was not present then and we can only conjecture what she said when she heard about it. She probably thought, as she did in regard to the Minister for Defence the other day, that he had a colossal cheek.

Concern was not expressed upon other areas either. The Taoiseach mentioned this, expressed that and said something else but expressions of real concern were conspicuous by their absence. It is extraordinary that only two bodies are mentioned neither of which has any parliamentary or statutory function whatsoever. First, there is the New Ireland Forum which has no responsibility to this House, was not set up by the House and does not have to report to the House. Secondly, there is this rather extraordinary new body Encounter set up by we do not know whom, responsible to nobody but apparently of some consequence because both the British Prime Minister and the Taoiseach went to the trouble of having a separate section on that. I refer to section 5 of the communiqué. This is an extraordinary group and I am sure all of us will now be running around trying to find out who they are, who started them off and what influence they have on the British Government and the Taoiseach that they should be given this extraordinary position in the communiqué. The real point is that neither group has any parliamentary or statutory basis whatsoever and are, therefore, of no consequence. There is no mention of the Northern Ireland Assembly which has authority from the British Government. I am not sure what the Taoiseach's position is on it. He refused to recognise it and no part of the meeting was devoted to a discussion on whether or not it should be strengthened or abolished, have no power, or more power. There was no pressure that something should be done and there is no reference of any kind to it here.

With regard to neutrality it is a matter of concern that the Taoiseach does not seem to have emphasised our independent neutral role in foreign policy. It is very important that that should be clearly understood. It is our position. It is our policy. It is something that must be recognised. We intend to adhere to it. It must never become a bargaining point in relation to Irish unity or the Northern Ireland problem. Neutrality is a mark of our freedom and independence. We have a free and independent foreign policy. I am sure "Maggie" was not displeased at what the Taoiseach said in relation to Grenada because what he said was exactly in accordance with what she said. That is a further indication of our failure to honour our independence in foreign policy.

I do not want to dwell too much on the statement because it is not of any great significance. The meeting has not achieved anything practicable. On the EEC I note the Taoiseach did express concern on what appears to be the joint strategy of the United Kingdom and Germany to alter the fundamental purpose of the EEC and make it some type of supranational free market area in which that would be abolished together with social and regional units and the EEC would be a market area for the benefit of the industrial powers. That appears to be the strategy behind many present developments. I hope that the Taoseach expressed concern on that.

May I have a few words on this matter?

Would the Deputy please excuse me? On matters such as this, of statements by the Taoiseach, the Chair is obliged to allow the Leader of the Opposition parties to contribute——

The Leader of what?

Of the Opposition parties.

I am probably the leader of a small opposition party for longer than anybody else in this House. I represent a point of view not covered necessarily by either the Leader of the Opposition or Deputy Mac Giolla and as there are——

Excuse me, Deputy Blaney. To be an Opposition party, there should be at least two members in the party.

We have three members here.

We have three here.

Why not make it one? It used to be seven.

I am sorry, Deputy. I cannot——

If the Chair will bear with me, I am not going to talk on the matter at all.

Does the Deputy want to ask a question?

I want to ask the following questions——

I want to ask the following questions of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle representing the Cheann Comhairle. In what manner——

The Deputy may ask one question.

Deputy, I am quite prepared to manage the business without your help. I know that you are very helpful, but I will manage without you. Thank you very much.

I have as much right to give my view on order in this House as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle has.

That is every Deputy's right.

I am making a point of view informally and I hope in a friendly fashion that if you allow Deputy Blaney to ask one question you could allow him to ask two. There is no need for you to give me a short answer.

You are telling me my business.

I am not telling you your business. I am making a suggestion to you.

Deputy Blaney, please, a question.

May I ask——

On a point of order, if a question is asked, am I entitled to reply? My understanding is that unhappily, I am not entitled to reply at the end of this debate, though I would always wish to do so. I would like clarification of that, first.

In the past, no statement was allowed in reply. However, I am entitled to allow you to reply to a question if Deputy Blaney has a question, which I would request him to ask now.

On a point of order, I want to submit to you that the Taoiseach is absolutely right. He has no right to reply on this occasion, either in the form of a statement or by way of reply to a question.

Surely there is no point in asking a question if there can be no reply.

The Deputy may ask a question if he wishes.

If one looks at the relevant Standing Order one will see there quite specifically that a statement may be made. It does not provide for anybody answering any question. That is the specific Standing Order under which the Leas-Cheann Comhairle must carry out the business of the House.

If there is an obligation on the Taoiseach to reply, there will be no reply.

There is no provision for the Taoiseach or anybody else to reply.

Could I have the Order of Business please?

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